Netplan v0.107 is now available

I’m happy to announce that Netplan version 0.107 is now available on GitHub and is soon to be deployed into a Linux installation near you! Six months and more than 200 commits after the previous version (including a .1 stable release), this release is brought to you by 8 free software contributors from around the globe.

Highlights

Highlights of this release include the new configuration types for veth and dummy interfaces:

network:
  version: 2
  virtual-ethernets:
    veth0:
      peer: veth1
    veth1:
      peer: veth0
  dummy-devices:
    dm0:
      addresses:
        - 192.168.0.123/24
      ...

Furthermore, we implemented CFFI based Python bindings on top of libnetplan’s API, that can easily be consumed by 3rd party applications (see full cffi-bindings.py example):

from netplan import Parser, State, NetDefinition
from netplan import NetplanException, NetplanParserException

parser = Parser()

# Parse the full, existing YAML config hierarchy
parser.load_yaml_hierarchy(rootdir='/')

# Validate the final parser state
state = State()
try:
    # validation of current state + new settings
    state.import_parser_results(parser)
except NetplanParserException as e:
    print('Error in', e.filename, 'Row/Col', e.line, e.column, '->', e.message)
except NetplanException as e:
    print('Error:', e.message)

# Walk through ethernet NetdefIDs in the state and print their backend
# renderer, to demonstrate working with NetDefinitionIterator &
# NetDefinition
for netdef in state.ethernets.values():
    print('Netdef', netdef.id, 'is managed by:', netdef.backend)
    print('Is it configured to use DHCP?', netdef.dhcp4 or netdef.dhcp6)

Changelog:

Bug fixes:

What’s New in the Linux Network Stack?

Recently, I attented a seminar at university and created a paper named “What’s New in the Linux Network Stack?”. As the content of my paper might be of interest to some people in the community, I decided to publish it here.

Abstract
In this paper, interesting features of the Linux kernel’s network stack are analyzed, which were introduced during the development cycles from Linux v3.7 to Linux v3.16. Special attention is given to the low-latency device polling, introduced in Linux v3.11, the netfilter’s SYNPROXY target, introduced in Linux v3.12 and the new Nftables framework, introduced in Linux v3.13. At the end a trend is presented, which shows the direction in which the Linux network stack is evolving.

What's New in the Linux Network Stack

Download

Feel free to study, improve and build upon my work as desired! Feedback is welcome.

Update: This paper is now formally released in the “Proceedings of the Seminars Future Internet (FI) and Innovative Internet Technologies and Mobile Communications (IITM)”, which can be found here: DOI: 10.2313/NET-2015-03-1

OpenPhoenux LinuxTag 2013 Impressions

LinuxTag-Logo
The LinuxTag 2013 is over, and I want to share some brief impressions I got during our stay in Berlin.

The LinuxTag is a nice and well organized FOSS exhibition in Germany, attracting more than 10.000 visitors during 4 days.

We gave a talk about the OpenPhoenux project at the 2nd evening and had about 60 listeners. Some of them got very interested and followed us to the booth afterwards. For everyone who couldn’t participate, the slides are available online: Slides.pdf

We shared a booth with some other “Linux & Embedded” projects, namely: OpenEmbedded, Ethernut, Nut/OS, Oswald/Metawatch. Our Booth was professionally looking and I think we got quite some people interested in the project. Basically we had a constant flow of people at the booth during our 3 days stay and the overall feedback was rather positive!

OpenPhoenux LinuxTag 2013 (1) OpenPhoenux LinuxTag 2013 (2) OpenPhoenux LinuxTag 2013 (3)

We got interviewed by the “GNU funzt!” team, as well. The (german) video is now available on Youtube (OpenPhoenux interview is starting at 5:00):


All in all it was a very nice stay in Berlin. I especially enjoyed meeting and chatting with guys who already owned a GTA04. It looks like the community is growing again!

Links:

OpenPhoenux FOSDEM Impressions

CIMG0210FOSDEM 2013 is over and I had a really nice time again at Brussels, together with the OpenPhoenux/GTA04 team. It was especially nice to meet some people from our community in person and discuss interesting ideas with them.

Furthermore, it was great to meet people, who didn’t know about neither OpenPhoenux nor Openmoko, having cool ideas, which the OpenPhoenux GTA04 open hardware plattform would enable them to do.

We even got interviewed by Sam – a moviemaker, ceating a movie called “Year of Open Source” about living in a free software/hardware world for (at least) one year.

As stated, I had a nice time and I’m looking forward to meeting with the OpenPhoenux community soon again. Now, as a picture says more than 1000 words, here are some photographs from our FOSDEM booth:

Update: Now there is a video available as well.

Reconsider ancient wisdom…

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

— George Bernard Shaw